


there is no passion, there is serenity

by purrfectj



Series: The Jedi Code [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Angst, Duty, F/M, Guilt, Kid Fic, Sorrow, this sucks and I want to cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 15:17:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purrfectj/pseuds/purrfectj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don't think I'm strong enough to let him go. Can you...can you...” Her voice dies at the sympathy that moves over the lovely Mirilian face, this woman who has spent more hours and days and weeks and years with Rogen than she will ever have. She swallows, hard, and tries again. “Please, Rissa.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is no passion, there is serenity

The baby is tiny and beautiful and perfect, ten fingers, ten toes, his lusty, angry squalls quieted immediately when he is placed at his mother's, at _her_ , breast. His hair is a thatch of darkness on his round head, his eyes amazingly blue when he blinks them up at her, his skin soft and silky and she lets herself breathe him in as she presses a kiss to his forehead. His mouth, a perfect rosebud, is pulling hard at her nipple, her milk spilling surprisingly easily for someone who didn't even realize she was pregnant until she was too far gone to do anything about it, and the pleasure/pain of the motion reminds her of his father. She almost apologizes to him, her miracle child, for the father he'll never know, for the husband she hasn't seen since she delivered him back to the Council chambers on Coruscant nearly thirty-eight weeks ago. He'd stopped, she remembers now, stopped and pressed a hand to her cheek, even with the curious onlookers, and said, “Take care of yourself.” 

“I'm good at that,” she'd agreed but the jauntiness had been hollow and his blue eyes had flashed and she'd thought, yes, now, now. 

It is never going to be now and the knowledge is a wrench and a weight and an emptiness, more vast and colder than space. 

“Feeding him will not make this easier.” 

She acknowledges the softly spoken words by clutching the infant closer, her eyes closing on the purest, most harrowing wave of grief, and feels his tiny fist knead her distended, swollen skin, smacking his lips as he sucks life from her. Hoarse from shouting, his birth painful and long and lonely in this dark corner of some half-forgotten star system where she's docked, she whispers, “Let me have this.” The please is unspoken but there, naked on her face, and it would take a woman with a stronger, meaner, angrier heart than Ranissa's to deny her. 

All of this would be so much easier if Ranissa didn't believe, truly and with every part of her and the Force inside and outside and around her, that Rogen and Keelyn and their little boy deserve more than the fate they've chosen. It would be easier for her to take the child from the mother who even now looks at him with the softest eyes Ranissa has ever seen, love shining from a face that has seen and participated in too much of the seedier side of life, if she didn't picture the tall, handsome man who had taught her to hold her first lightsaber with such endless patience standing with his wife and child, his big hand helping to cradle the tiny head. 

It would be easier for Ranissa to hate the woman who had proven her Master was only a man, after all, a man with desires and fears and emotions, easier for her to dismiss Keelyn as just another spacer out for herself and whatever credits she could gather in her greedy hands if she hadn't been at the smuggler's side as she labored to bring her son into the world, as she'd cried and pleaded for Rogen, as she'd sobbed, nearly crushing the bones in Ranissa's hand and whimpered, “He should be here. Why can he never be here?” 

It would be easier if she could let Keelyn continue to believe that Ranissa loved Rogen with a woman's heart, could continue to let Keelyn's jealousy blind her, could continue to let Rogen's own heart tear him in two, duty and honor forever severed from personal entanglements in the mind of a Jedi. 

“I am not in love with him as you are.” 

Keelyn traces the delicate shell of her son's ear, the curve of his nose that already promises to be small and dainty like her own, the round cheek that she hopes will lengthen to show his sire. “I know.” Ranissa's look is mild surprise, mild as everything the woman who had once been Rogen's Padawan and is now a Jedi in her own right does and says. Keelyn manages a small, tired smile as she switches the baby to her other breast, something in his flailing and quick, gasping breaths telling her he hasn't yet finished his meal, greedy, gorgeous child. 

“Then why?” 

This is a question, Ranissa sees, for which Keelyn has no answer. It is, in fact, the _wrong_ question, as Keelyn's mouth firms, a frown beetling the dark red brows over the turbulent green eyes. Uncomfortable and ill at ease suddenly, Ranissa asks, “What will you call him?” 

The name the smuggler murmurs is fitting, passed down for generations as a middle name for male children in Rogen's family, a line that should have ended with him and now would not, though this child might never know it. “A fine name.” 

The two women spend the next few hours monitoring the baby and each other, a quiet, peaceful scene, Keelyn sleeping in fits and starts, muttering grouchily when Ranissa checks her again, making sure everything is healing as it should, worrying her lower lip when Ranissa scans the child's vitals only to sigh gustily when she pronounces, each time, that he is healthy and will thrive. 

“Is he...” Ranissa watches as Keelyn's hands smooth over the baby's hair, as she tucks the soft grey blanket that Ranissa recognizes with a rush of surprise and alarm and pity must have been fashioned out of a Jedi robe, Rogen's robe, her green eyes earnest and sad and terrified. “Can he see the Force?” 

It is most likely too early to tell but Ranissa knows it can do no harm to look. She closes her eyes, centers, grounds, and reaches out to the fragile little light out of the billions and billions of fragile little lights in the galaxy that is this baby, this small child who should not be but is. She brushes at his mind, probing so very gently and is rewarded with a surprised, welcoming tug in return that tells her yes, this child, this beautiful little boy who was an orphan before he was ever born, is Force sensitive. 

Another of the billions of lights, stronger, rougher, the edges flaring dangerously, tries to shove her back. She jolts, this Jedi a familiar presence and she stands her ground, firm and resolute but soft, open, as he's taught her to greet him in the nebulous place between stars and galaxies and worlds and minds. His emotions tangle as he recognizes her, his worry and his wonder and his joy buried quickly behind a wall he builds haphazardly as he begins to retreat from the spark he's created that tries to catch and hold this Force signature that calls to it, that whispers of fatherhood and love and wishes. 

_Thank you._

Ranissa tries to stop him, tries to capture and hold him here, where he is needed, to send him coordinates or pictures or a plea with his family's location so that he can be here in more than spirit, through more than the Force that keeps him separate from those he loves. He slips through her fingers like grains of sand, his sorrow deep and wide and endless, and she is unaware she is crying until she feels Keelyn's hand on her shoulder. 

“That can be good or bad,” the smuggler drawls but there is concern on her face as Ranissa presses her fingertips hard along her cheekbones, stopping the flow of tears with will and grit and discipline. They continue to burn and press and ache behind her eyes, though, and even with the Force she can't completely bury her heart. 

“He could feel me. It is most likely he has inherited some of his father's gifts.” There is more she could say but would it be a comfort or a burden when there is already so much pain in the other woman's eyes? 

The baby, denied the playmates he felt hovering at the edges of his dreams, wakes screaming, his legs churning off the blanket despite its swaddle and Keelyn turns away to hide her own dread and despair to hold him, laughing despite everything when he roots against her chest, mouth opening and closing like a fish. She gives him her nipple again, this their third feeding, and feels cramping low in her abdomen as he sucks, a sensation Ranissa assures her means her hormones and her body are healing properly from the birth. All it makes her believe is that she will always feel hollow and empty now that Rogen's child is not nestled under heart, safe inside her body. “Not afraid to demand what you want, like your mama.” 

So much wrong here, Ranissa thinks, so much wrong and not any right and what can she do but what is best for the child, for the woman, for the man, for the stubborn, stupid, hardheaded couple who are throwing away the most precious gift in the galaxy? 

He falls asleep again with a droplet of milk clinging to the corner of his sweet, slack mouth and Keelyn is suddenly exhausted, spent, done. She knows what has to happen next and no amount of love or wishing or credits will make the choice she's already made any better or easier. She counts his fingers and his toes again, rubs the minuscule bumps of his spine until he burps loudly, not even stirring from his sleep, kisses him and murmurs to him and tries to imprint his beautiful, perfect, sweet face on her heart, next to the tall, lean man with the wild black curls and piercing blue eyes, her precious son, her star-crossed love. 

“I don't think I'm strong enough to let him go. Can you...can you...” Her voice dies at the sympathy that moves over the lovely Mirilian face, this woman who has spent more hours and days and weeks and years with Rogen than she will ever have. She swallows, hard, and tries again. “Please, Rissa.” 

“Sleep,” Ranissa whispers, passing her fingertips lightly over Keelyn's forehead. “Sleep and dream peaceful dreams.” 

They would never be friends, the Sage and the Scoundrel. But they will protect them, the man, the Jedi, they both love and this child, this precious, gorgeous, greedy, perfect child that even now fusses as he is stolen from his mother's arms. 


End file.
